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SMU wasted little time finding a new head coach. Five days after Chad Morris bolted to take the Arkansas job, SMU has hired former California and Louisiana Tech coach Sonny Dykes to be the next leader of its football program.

"I can't tell you how excited I am to be introduced as the Head Coach at SMU," Dykes said in a statement. "We are going to score a lot of points -- always have, always will -- and we will balance our offensive production with defensive results. They say that 'Defense Wins Championships,' and we will look to build a championship-level defense on the Hilltop."

As the coaching search unfolded over the course of essentially a workweek, Dykes and SMU interim head coach Jeff Traylor were the two names most frequently attached to the opening. In choosing 48-year-old Dykes, SMU is making a bet on college experience over a relatively unknown quantity.

Dykes, whose father, Spike, spent 14 years as head coach at Texas Tech, has been a collegiate head coach for seven seasons. He first spent three years at Louisiana Tech, where the Bulldogs put together a 22-15 mark and in 2011 won their first WAC title in a decade. Dykes' offenses, a branch of the Air Raid system that he learned as an assistant coach under Mike Leach at Texas Tech, rewrote the Louisiana Tech record books. In 2012, the Bulldogs averaged 51.5 points and 478 yards per game.

Source: SMU hires former Cal coach Sonny Dykes to be next head coach

He translated that success to an opportunity at California starting in 2013. Dykes inherited a 3-9 team and rebuilt around future No. 1 overall pick Jared Goff, going 8-5 and winning the Armed Forces Bowl in 2015. Cal fired him following the 2016 season after Dykes reportedly flirted with job openings at Baylor, Missouri, South Carolina and Virginia.

All that is to say that SMU and athletic director Rick Hart have an idea of what a Sonny Dykes era will look like on the Hilltop. He turned Cal around on the field and in the classroom and was successful below the "power five" conference level with Louisiana Tech.

It's not that Traylor is inexperienced. He spent 15 years building Gilmer High School into a state power, winning three state titles while also serving as the school's athletic director. His high school success in East Texas made it easy to picture him as the successor to Morris, himself a renowned high school coach before making it in the college game.

But Traylor has been in the college game for only three years. He spent two seasons as the tight ends and special teams coach under Charlie Strong at Texas before coming to SMU this season to serve as associate head coach and running backs coach.

10 things to know about new SMU head coach Sonny Dykes, including his wild college major

Granted, in that time Traylor earned enough support from his players for them to run a social media campaign for him to get the head coaching gig. He's still never served as a coordinator at the college level, unlike Morris and his five years as an offensive coordinator and play caller at Tulsa and Clemson before coming to SMU.

Unlike 2014, when SMU started its coaching search in September after June Jones resigned following a Week 2 loss to UNT, the athletic department had no time to agonize over this decision. Next week's early signing period, a new wrinkle to this year's coaching carousel, made it imperative that a coach who could salvage the recruiting class was in place as soon as prudently possible.

Is Dykes the most exciting young name on the coaching market, like Morris was three years ago? No, but he brings in a track record of rebuilding programs, an exciting brand of offense and, as a Big Spring native and former Texas Tech player and assistant, in-state connections. He had at least two player commitments from Texas in each of his four recruiting classes at Cal.

Now he'll have to recruit Texas at a much larger scale at SMU. The athletic department is betting on Dykes, and his experience, to get the job done.